Hidden Cameras and a Hidden Agenda.

There’s quite a bit of talk about the wonderful Ken Loach at the moment,  as the much celebrated English film director has returned to the theme of revolutionary Irish history. His latest film, Jimmy’s Hall, tells the tale of Jimmy Gralton, the only Irishman ever to be deported from Ireland. Gralton, as a revolutionary socialist, was not exactly the most welcome of individuals in conservative 1930s Ireland.  The film sees Loach tackle  a period only a decade on from the entrenched bitterness of the Civil War he captured so well in The Wind That Shakes The Barely.

A publicity shot for Jimmy’s Hall, showing Barry Ward as the Leitrim radical Jimmy Gralton.

Anyway, what does this have to do with Dublin?

One of Loach’s most controversial works  is Hidden Agenda, set against the backdrop of the conflict in the North. It deals with the tricky subjects of state terrorism during the conflict.  Released in 1990,  the film depicts the  fictional assassination of an American civil rights lawyer in the North.

It includes what I think is one of the most dramatic scenes ever filmed in Dublin. In the video below, Dublin can be seen from 1:32:15, with a car turning onto College Green.  The SAS are monitoring a meeting on the O’Connell Bridge between a former  army intelligence officer and an investigator, but they soon sweep in and bundle the man into a van. The panicked investigator hops into a Dublin taxi, and a rather comical exchange follows.

 

There was certainly nothing comical about the shooting of the kidnap scene on the bridge however. It was filmed using hidden cameras and passersby, who knew nothing about the filming of Loach’s movie , barely blink an eye! I think it’s one of my favourite Dublin moments on the big screen.

 

The van takes off down the street, on a normal day in Dublin…

 

 

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Dublin’s Historic Breweries: Watkins’ of Ardee Street

The way we drink in Dublin has been changing over the last few years; I can’t say evolving, so much as there has been a restoration of natural order. Craft beers vie for counter space alongside Diageo products and pubs like the Black Sheep, Against the Grain and The Beerhouse have sprung up to back up the Porterhouse in breaking the Guinness monopoly. Most importantly, our brewers are starting to brew again, with Five Lamps Brewery and JW Sweetman’s to name but two.

I say ‘again’ as while for decades Guinness and later their parent company Diageo would fully monopolise brewing in Dublin, ours was once an industry that could “present an unrivalled record to the world” (Irish Independent, 05/06/1908) and this city’s brewing was said, as far back as the 17th century to be “the very marrow bone of the commonwealth of Dublin.” (http://simtec.us/dublinbrewing/history.html) The excise list for 1768 showed returns for forty three brewers in the city, with many of these large operations employing dozens of workers.

Throughout the 1800’s, with the rise of Guinness’, Dublin’s breweries either amalgamated or closed so by 1850, there were twenty breweries left, by the 1870’s, there were ten left, and by 1920, there were just four breweries including Guinness’ operating in Dublin. One of the largest breweries during this time was Watkins’ Brewery, originally founded as the Ardee Street Brewery, and later known by the title of Watkins, Jameson, Pim & Co., Ltd.

Advertisement for Watkins’ Brewers. From the Aonach an Garda programme,1926.

A date for the foundation of the brewery is hard to ascertain, but the Irish Times, in an article on Dublin brewers (21/01/1932) reported that Watkins’ “of Ardee Street Brewery hold the record of having paid the highest excise duty of any Dublin brewer in 1766”  so its going at least that long, with the excise list naming Alderman James Taylor as the owner. By the 1820’s, the brewery at Ardee Street was the third largest in Dublin, with an output of 300 barrels per week. It was bettered only by Guinness’ with 600 barrels per week and Michael Sweetman’s with 450 barrels per week.

By 1865 the brewery was exporting over 14, 000 hogsheads or approximately six million imperial pints of stout. (Findlaters: The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001, chapter 4.) The brewery was dissected by Cork Street, with the brewing house and offices on its south side, and 87 dwellings for their workers on the north side, some of which exist today, as can be seen in the image below. The houses were built at at outlay of £14, 460, with rents “from 2/6 to 6/-.”  (Irish Independent, Sept. 12th, 1913.)

Watkins’ Buildings, and all that remains of the brewery.

The Freemans’ Journal, (12/02/1904) spoke of rumours circulating Dublin of an amalgamation of two of its more prosperous breweries, namely Watkins’ and Jameson, Pim and Co., who would move from their premises between Anne Street and Beresford Street to make way for another Jameson: John Jameson and Son, the whiskey distillers. The article also reported that the Watkins’ family had “long since disappeared, and the business now carried on by Mr. Alfred S. Darley.”

The brewery saw action (although not much) during the 1916 rising, when it was occupied by Con Colbert (a teetotaller) and a garrison of 20 men- an outpost under the direct command of Eamonn Ceannt in the South Dublin Union. The outpost was ineffective, and the volunteers eventually joined up with the Marrowbone Lane distillery garrison. It was also tragically caught up in the events of the “Battle of Dublin,” a week of clashes in Dublin from 28th June to 5th July 1922, at the start of the Civil War that saw over sixty people killed. A cooper by the name of James Clarke who worked in the brewery was shot near Gardiner’s Row on the 6th July whilst walking a friend home. He took a bullet straight to the face and died half an hour after admission to Jervis Street Hospital.

O’Connell’s Dublin Ale

Towards the end of the twenties, Watkins’ Jameson, Pim and Co. acquired Darcy’s Brewery and it’s trademarks, including O’Connell’s Dublin Ale, which we’ve mentioned briefly on here before. The Findlaters book acknowledges the takeover of Darcy’s brewery, and also mentions that the company owned several Dublin pubs, “which it called Taps.” In March 1937, the financial paragraph of the Irish Times announced that the firm was in voluntary liquidation. The article shows that at the time, the brewery still employed over one hundred men, and blamed rising excise and falling exports for their downturn.The Findlaters book above also says that while the company outlasted many of it’s competitors, it closed down in 1939.

We took a look at Dublin’s air raid shelters recently, and in 1943, the brewery was subject to a high court wrangle with a High Court judge quashing a warrant issued by a district justice who, under the “Air Raid Precautions Act, 1939” demanded that the Dublin Corporation be allowed enter the brewery, by force if necessary, to build a shelter in its basement. The demand wasn’t met. After this, as the excellent Wide and Convenient Streets concur, things get a little bit hazy regarding the brewery. In September 1951, there was a large fire at the site, and by 1954, advertisements pop up in various papers offering factory premises to let. With a history spanning three centuries, the brewery seems to have gone “quietly into that good night” along with the rest of Dublin’s breweries, which we hope to cover in the near future.

* Company records sites suggest there was a “Watkins, Jameson, Pim & Co. (1976) Limited”  set up on Wed the 28th of Apr 1976 and is still in existence at 10 Ardee Street.

 

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The Other Half Lives.

 

Tomorrow evening sees the launch of The Other Half Lives, a new collection of photographs from Wally Cassidy. Yours truly will be saying a few words. The work will be launched in the Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square.  The book contains a wide selection of street images captured by Wally between 1989 and 1993. We’ve featured plenty of his work on the site before, and below are a few personal favourites.

 

Protesters burn an effigy of Haughey on Kildare Street.

 

When England came to town: A forgotten football fixture in 1990.

 

Famous Dublin street performer ‘The Diceman’.

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Some Dublin Penny Journal illustrations from the 1830s.

The Dublin Penny Journal was a weekly newspaper published in the Irish capital in the 1830s. I’ve always found it to be of mixed quality as a source, but one thing I have always enjoyed about dipping into it are the illustrations. Whole volumes of the magazine have been digitised here.

 

The infamous Donnybrook Fair (1835)

This first illustration shows the (in)famous Donnybrook Fair, which we’ve looked at on the site here before. In that piece Ciaran noted that “By the time it was dissolved by Dublin Corporation in 1855, it had become a cacophonous event famed for music, heavy drinking, cock-fighting and shillelagh swinging.”

 

 

 

George II statue in St. Stephen’s Green (1835)

The missing centre-piece of St. Stephen’s Green also appeared in the publication. The work of the talented John Van Nost The Younger, this statue stood in the centre of the park from 1756 until it was bombed (not for the first time) by republicans in 1937.

Entrance to the Zoological Gardens (1834)

Illustrations depicting Dublin zoo were plentiful in the magazine. The below combination of a puma and a camel may not have worked so well in real life…..

The Zoological Society (1834)

 

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A brief look at Dublin’s WWII air raid shelters.

Image taken from the Nelson Pillar showing an air raid shelter on O’Connell Street during WWII.

While there was no World War II in Ireland (don’t you just love the term ‘The Emergency’), there were many air raid shelters constructed in the Irish capital during the years of that conflict. The above image, showing an overground shelter, was taken from the top of the Nelson Pillar.

A September 1940 news-report gives some idea of how widespread shelters were in the city, and also highlights the fact overground shelters appeared primarily in the principal streets of the capital and in areas with tenement populations:

At the moment trench shelters have accommodation for 6,500 people, and they are situated at Fitzwilliam Square, the Custom House, Merrion Square, Oscar Square, St. Patrick’s Park Spitalfields, Pimlico and Ordmond Square. The overground shelters, which are situated in the principal streets and in the vicinity of tenements, will give accommodation to some eight thousand people.

The Irish Times of 11 November 1939 details Dublin’s planned precautions.

Shelters were not only provided and constructed by Dublin Corporation, some emerged from private  (and often subsidised) construction efforts. The Irish Press reported for example that “at least one Dublin cinema is providing its own air-raid shelter. This cinema was built on the site of a Turkish baths, and the old bath chamber, which as underground, has been adapted as a shelter. ”

 

The Irish Times noted in September 1940 that there was “much willful  damage” being done to the shelters, quoting a Captain J.J Blake of the Irish Army who issued a radio appeal to citizens not to vandalise the structures. Blake explained that when first constructed the policy was to leave the shelters open, but “so great was the willful destruction and damage that the authorities were compelled to close them.”

 

A 1939 image of men working on an air raid shelter (Image: Irish Press)

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Shake Hands With The Devil (1959)

‘Shake Hands With The Devil’, released in 1959, is a film set during the Irish War of Independence and filmed here in Dublin. It was directed by the English film director Michael Anderson, and at the time of its release it received quite a lot of media attention owing to the fact it was banned by Belfast authorities,  with one northern politician jokingly asking if it was banned because it’s title could be mistaking for ‘Shake Hands With Dev’!

The film is worth watching for some great historic shots of Dublin. The plot essentially revolves around an American medical student, Kerry O’Shea (played by Don Murray) who is drawn into the IRA campaign.In the opening stages of the film, from 1:45 onwards, as the narrator that tells us “often in its turbulent history, the men of Ireland had risen to fight for their freedom – only to be crushed”, we see brilliant shots of Glasnevin Cemetery, including from the top of Daniel O’Connell’s roundtower. IRA men are seen carrying out a fake funeral in the cemetery for a casket loaded with riffles, while Black and Tans burst onto the screen in pursuit.

 

 

Scenes from Glasnevin Cemetery.

 

Trinity College Dublin plays the part of the Royal College of Surgeons in the following scene of the film, while from 9.30 on the inside of a Dublin pub is shown, though I’m unable to identify it. Black and Tans enter the premises and interrogate locals.

 

A Black and Tan enters a Dublin public house.

 

Michael Connelly, who has researched depictions of the IRA in film and television has noted that “The message of the film is that the Old IRA was a legitimate force of common men, much like American patriots, who fought the British for independence and freedom. By being willing to accept a compromise they appear reasonable, peace loving and hesitant to use violence.”

My thanks to Paddy Gifford for bringing my attention to this film.

Image credit: moviepostershop.com

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Is it over yet? Hiding out in the Coliseum Theatre, 1916.

My thanks to Joe Mooney of the East Wall History Group for sending on this excellent little 1916 story, which he notes comes from a magazine that was contained “Within material donated to the East Wall History Group by the family of Irish Volunteer Richard Roe (Jacobs Garrison 1916)”

Two soldiers were discovered hiding out in the runs of the Coliseum Theatre in Henry Street on 3 May 1916, confused as the whether or not the rebellion was exactly still underway.  By 3 May the executions of the rebellions leadership figures were already underway.

The following account and images were published in a contemporary magazine.

 

Contemporary magazine report.

The ruins of the theatre.

Soldiers being escorted through the streets.

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Mural in Dublin unveiled to anti-Apartheid activist Marius Schoon

A mural dedicated to South African anti-Apartheid activist Marius Schoon, who lived in Dublin for several years, was unveiled last week in the new offices of Comhlámh at 12 Parliament Street. It was painted by by street artist Katrina Rupert (aka KIN MX). Comhlámh, founded in 1975, is the Irish Association of Development Workers and is committed to “social justice, human rights and global development issues”.

“Kathrina Rupit with her fantastic mural celebrating the life of Marius Schoon, anti-apartheid activist.” Credit – Comhlámh FB page

Marius Schoon (1937 – 1999) was a long-term political prisoner and exile of Afrikaner dissident. He served 12 years in prison for a futile effort to blow up a radio transmitter at a police station in Johannesburg in 1964. On his release in 1976, he joined the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party in exile.

In 1984, his second wife Jeannette Curtis, and their 6-year-old daughter, Katryn, were killed by a letter bomb intended for Schoon. The pair were blown up in front of Fritz, their 3-year-old son, in the kitchen of their house in exile in Angola.

Jeanette and Katryn both held Irish passports due to the fact that one of Jeanette’s grandparents was Irish. After the horrific incident, Schoon and his son moved to Dublin where they were granted an Irish passport by the Fine Gael-Labour government. Fritz later spoke about their relocation to Ireland:

Marius and I arrived in Ireland on the back of what was a very traumatic experience for us both. The Irish government was kind enough to grant us both citizenship on compassionate grounds. Over and above this gesture, Marius and I received compassion and generosity in many forms from Ireland and its people. As testament to this Marius, speaking of his time in Ireland, reported – in the Rift, by Hilda Bernstein – that ‘I really feel that for the last two or three years, for the first time in my life, literally, I’ve got a stability and a security that I’ve never had. I am actually enjoying the security that we have at the moment.”

Living at 22 Shamrock Street in Phibsboro, Schoon became active with the Irish Anti-Aparthied Movement, the new Ranelagh Multi-Denominational school and was co-ordinator of Comhlámh between 1988-1991.

Letter titled ‘A School Where All Welcome’ to Irish Independent (27 June 1988)

In January 1988, the Media Association of Ireland hosted a lecture on ‘The Media and South Africa* by Marius Schoon at Newman House, St. Stephen’s Green. In May 1990, RTE Radio 1 produced a 30 minute documentary on Schoon’s life.

During this period, he met and later married Dublin-born anti-Aparthied activist Sherry McClean. From 1985 through 1987, she worked as a volunteer at Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO), a school for refugees established by the African National Congress (ANC) in Mazimbu, Tanzania, where she counseled and developed social support for children and adults. An interview was recorded with Sherry in 2004 as part of the African Archivist Archive.

Schoon (centre with glasses) joins in a clenched fist salute for the released ANC leader in Merrion Square, Dublin, organised by the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement in February 1990. Photograph : Frank Miller

Schoon, son Fritz and new wife Sherry returned to South Africa in late 1991 where he began work in the Development Bank, overseeing projects to help rural black communities.

In August 1995, he launched a lawsuit against Craig Williamson, spy for the security forces and former family friend, who was responsible for sending the parcel bomb that killed his second wife and daughter. (Williamson also admitted responsibility for the bombing of the ANC headquarters in London and sending the package which killed left-wing Jewish anti-Apartheid activist Ruth First in Mozambique in 1982). In 1998 Williamson and Jerry Raven, his accomplice, applied for amnesty with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

In 1999, Schoon died in hospital after a long battle with lung cancer. A year later the TRC granted both Williamson and Raven amnesty. (In 2008, Williambsurg was declared bankrupt by the Johannesburg High Court which will probably be the only form of legal justice he will probably ever face”).

Nelson Mandela described Schoon after his death as:

an enduring example of the fight for non-racialism and democracy. He destroyed the myth that all Afrikaners were racists and oppressors. He therefore will be greatly missed, not only by his colleagues in the fight against apartheid, but by the entire South African nation.

The event last Thursday was attended by Marius’ widow Sherry, independent social researcher Brian Harvey and Cathryn O’Reilly, one of the Dunnes Stores workers who went on strike  in 1984 over the handling of South African produce. Schoon and his young son frequently joined the picket lines during the two and half-year strike. Cathryn recalled the period:

We were all invited to the AGM of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. They had this man Marius Schoon who got up and thanked us for going on strike. He was a white South African who lost his wife and his six-year-old daughter to a letter bomb because they were opposed to the apartheid system. He had a very profound effect on everyone in that we had nothing to lose only our jobs. He had lost his wife and his daughter for what he believed in. That made us more determined to continue doing picket duty and to speak out about it. Arthur Scargill (president of the National Union of Mineworkers) came down to the picket line. He had a placard and walked up and down with us.

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Images from the UCD student occupation of the Nelson Pillar (1955)

In October 1955, a number of students from University College Dublin were involved in an occupation of the monument to Horatio Nelson on O’Connell Street, locking themselves inside the public viewing area and attempting to do away with the controversial figure of Nelson with flamethrowers. A banner of celebrated UCD graduate Kevin Barry was displayed from the viewing platform, and a large crowd gathered below to witness the spectacle. Nine young men had their names and addresses taken by Gardaí for their involvement in the protest, yet none were arrested, which says something about the atmosphere on O’Connell Street that day.

My thanks to Karl Finlay for these newspaper clippings from the following day. My forthcoming history of the Nelson Pillar has gone to print and should be in bookshops by late May, with plenty on this rather bizarre protest.

The banner of Kevin Barry that students hung over the viewing platform.

A crowd gathers below the Nelson Pillar to observe the student occupation.

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“The best fighter money can’t buy” – Joe Higgins and four decades in Dublin politics.

There has been very considerable media coverage in the last two days concerning the decision of Joe Higgins not to stand for re-election to the Dáil at the end of this term. Yesterday morning Joe was interviewed at length on the Sean O Rourke programme for RTE Radio, in an interview that focused on his career inside the Dáil. Sean noted that it’s often said all political careers end in failure, and that this could be said of Joe’s – something he completely rejected. I thought it would be interesting to look a little at Joe’s decades long political activism in Dublin briefly on the site here.

Joe Higgins shares a platform with the late Tony Benn, 1982. (This great image was captured by Derek Speirs)

While Joe Higgins ultimately built a strong political base in Dublin West, he was born in the Dingle Gaeltacht in 1949, one of nine children. He enrolled in the priesthood following his graduation from Dingle Christian Brothers School, not a totally unusual choice for a young Irishman at the time. Sent to a Christian seminary school in Minnesota, Joe was exposed to anti Vietnam war activism and the political left for the first time. In an interview with Village magazine in 2005, he recalled that:

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Church was a big part of life in Ireland, the Catholic faith inculcated into you. Then you move on and develop and begin to see the world differently, you begin to think critically for yourself.

Higgins recalled his time in the United States in an interview with The Kerryman newspaper in 1989, telling them that:

I think being in the US at that time and the experience of the Vietnam war had a big influence on me. What the US was trying to do to the Vietnamese people and the horror of that, made me realise that fundamental changes were needed to end that kind of war which was basically a war of big business.

On returning to Ireland in 1972 he enrolled at University College Dublin, which began decades of political activism in the Irish capital. About this period he has stated “I started reading about socialism when I became active at college but books were never my first inspiration. I’m instinctively a socialist. It doesn’t take much to recognise that there is obviously huge inequality of wealth in the world”. Joe became Chairman of UCD Labour Youth during his time at Belfield. Higgins and others in Labour Youth were vocal opponents of Labour’s time in coalition with Fine Gael during the 1970s, evident from a letter that appeared in The Irish Times in 1975, with Higgins noting:

Within the Labour Party there is a growing call for Labour to seize the opportunity for independent action, and stop being the rubber stamp for Fine Gael’s policies…..At some stage, even the most moderate leaders will have to call ‘Halt!’ to Labour’s disastrous excursion into coalition.

Higgins belonged to a tendency within the Labour Party that became known as ‘Militant’, a term which was also applied to its co-thinkers in the British Labour Party. Essentially this tendency grew around an internal newspaper, which pushed Trotskyite politics as the way forward for the Labour Party and broader left. Early editions of Militant’s newspaper have been digitised by the excellent Irish Left Archive, and I’ve linked to one below. Militant called for a united Socialist Ireland, yet rejected armed Irish Republican violence, noting that “a bloody sectarian war would throw the Labour movement backwards.”

Via Irish Left Archive. (Available to read here: http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/militant-no3-e.pdf)

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Two important fundraisers this weekend

Friday 2nd May (The Black Sheep, 8pm – 1am. €10 entry)

The Stoneybatter & Smithfield People’s History Project are hosting a night downstairs in The Black Sheep (61 Capel Street) to raise funds for their ambitious and exciting ‘Street Stories’ history and cultural festival happening in Dublin 7 this August.

Expect a wild night of 60s Soul, Beat, Garage, Soul and Reggae. DJs include yours truly, Stew Reddin, Barry Gruff and Darren Hawthorn.

More details see Facebook event here.

Street Stories Festival – A Celebration of Dublin Life! Coming to Stoneybatter and Smithfield in late August.

 

Saturday 3rd May (Seomra Spraoi, 10pm – 3am. €10/€5 entry. BYOB)

The city’s favourite underground magazine Rabble is putting on their first fundraiser ruckus in over two years. With issue number 8 just been sent to the printers, come down to Seomra Spraoi to celebrate with the usual dancetastic tunage from Rabble selectors and comrades.

More details see Facebook event here.

Rabble Ruckus event poster.

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Dying for honour: the duel in eighteenth century Dublin.

I’ve recently been reading the colourful memoirs of Jonah Barrington, an Irish lawyer, judge and politician from the eighteenth century. Barrington was a vocal opponent of the 1800 Act of Union that closed the Irish Parliament on College Green, and his published memoirs in the early nineteenth century were often humourous but also frequently cutting of his opponents. They give good insight into the life of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, not only inside the corridors of political power but socially too.

Jonah Barrington, taken from his published memoirs.

One interesting subject that emerges is the hobby of pistol dueling, with Barrington writing:

It is nearly incredible what a singular passion the Irish gentlemen (though in general excellent tempered fellows) formerly had for fighting each other and immediately becoming friends again. A Duel was indeed considered a necessary pieces of a young man’s education, but by no means a ground for any future animosity with his opponent: – on the contrary, proving the bravery of both, it only cemented their friendship.

Curious for more information, I stumbled upon an interesting article on the subject of dueling in Irish history by James Kelly, who noted that the Phoenix Park enjoyed a particular popularity in the city as far as the hobby went:

In the early and mid-eighteenth century, Dublin city was the dueling epicentre of the country, and the Phoenix Park emerged as the kingdom’s preferred killing field. The appeal of the Park lay in its size as well as its proximity to the city of Dublin. Duelists and their seconds could go there secure in the knowledge that they had an opportunity to blaze away free from interruption but within convenient access of the city should urgent medical help prove necessary.

A striking illustration of two men engaging in a duel (Image credit: http://history1800s.about.com/od/majorfigures/ss/duels19thcentury.htm)

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